BOSTON — Attorney General Andrea Campbell says she is “no longer in the middle” of the long legislative audit saga, now pigmented by separate House and Senate approaches and ongoing sparring as the situation remains in court.
In an opinion piece published and distributed recently in CommonWealth Beacon, House Speaker Ron Mariano alleged that Auditor Diana DiZoglio “has taken advantage of the ease through which misinformation and personal attacks spread through our media ecosystem” in her push to audit the Legislature after 72% of voters passed an audit law in 2024. Mariano again wrote of his concerns about DiZoglio’s alleged lack of impartiality and likened her “strategies” to those of President Donald Trump.
Mariano, D-Quincy, used the piece to promote a House bill (H 5469) passed in early June that would create a formal process to govern public access to legislative records, subject the governor’s office to the public records law, and limit the auditor’s power to investigate the branch to four categories of administrative functions, narrowing the more expansive language outlined in the voter law.
The bill also bars the courts from resolving disputes between the auditor and the Legislature, which reps said was because of separation of powers issues. The House didn’t hold a public hearing on the bill, and gave representatives about 24 hours to review it before taking a vote.
Asked on “Boston Public Radio” Wednesday by host Jim Braude if she found the House bill to be an “adequate response to the voters’ will expressed two Novembers ago,” Campbell said, “I’m going to reframe the question.”
“The speaker should be invited here to answer however he feels about his bill, his op-ed,” Campbell said. “We are now removed, because this is now in the court.”
“I supported, as I say it all the time, Question 1, and that the Legislature could be audited, but that there were constitutional limitations to that audit. The court has now said there were four areas, and limited the scope of the audit, right? Which is what we were looking for,” Campbell continued. “So that will play out. We are no longer in the middle of that. If that changes and the auditor comes back, or the Legislature comes back, then we will then, of course, be asked to participate at that stage. So we’re not there yet.”
Supreme Judicial Court justices are still mulling the case over. They gave Campbell a 30-day deadline in early May to decide whether or not to allow DiZoglio to secure outside counsel in her pursuit of claims against the Legislature for its alleged failure to respond to four specific requests outlined in a January 2025 memo: official budgets for each chamber of the Legislature for fiscal years 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024; copies of official audits of each chamber for the same fiscal years; a listing of all transactions related to each chamber’s balance forward line item for those fiscal years; and a list of all monetary settlement agreements entered into by each chamber with any current or former employees or elected members during the same timeframe.
Campbell decided to allow DiZoglio to obtain outside counsel, and DiZoglio said she planned to have Shannon Liss-Riordan represent her.
DiZoglio previously blasted the House bill, calling the effort to block disputes from reaching the courts “craziness.”
In a response to Mariano’s article, DiZoglio posted Monday on X: “I’m so sorry Speaker @RonMariano. My word choice describing your public corruption is so much more concerning than the lawbreaking corruption itself. I’ll be a good girl & remember that my ambitions (gasp) & persistence as a woman really pisses you & your friends off.”
Asked on June 2 if he thinks senators will also pass the House bill, Mariano told reporters, “I talked to the Senate.”
The House has not provided DiZoglio with any of the outlined documents, Mariano’s office confirmed, but would if its audit-related legislation were signed into law.
Asked on June 3 her impression of the House bill, Senate President Karen Spilka said she had not yet seen it.
“I can’t comment on it without seeing the contents of it. I don’t comment on things until I read them and see what they say,” Spilka told reporters.
The Senate passed a resolution on May 28 that lays out the history of the chamber’s dispute with DiZoglio and clarifies that senators are providing a certain scope of records to her office. Spilka said on June 3 that the Senate gave DiZoglio the four outlined documents, “so that should be the end of the court situation.”
In a June 1 letter sent to Deputy Attorney General and General Counsel for the Office of the State Auditor Michael Leung-Tat, Senate Counsel James DiTullio goes over the four document requests, noting that “information concerning each of the requests is already available to the public online.”
The letter is split into four parts: official budgets, official audits, balance forward line item and monetary settlement agreements. It states that the Senate has “no such monetary settlement agreements” for the fiscal years outlined in DiZoglio’s request.
“The Senate reserves all its rights to object to this or any future audit on any grounds, including, but not limited to, the aforementioned constitutional issues, the OSA’s retroactive application of Chapter 250 of the Acts of 2024, or the potential conflict of interest presented by the State Auditor’s own involvement in a performance audit that covers a time period in which she served as an elected member of the Senate,” DiTullio wrote.
“With the delivery of this letter and related materials, the Senate has fully responded to the OSA’s requests,” he wrote in conclusion.
The Senate has created a “Senate Open Records” page on the Legislature’s website featuring chamber expenditures, payroll and spending, and audits.
Ella Adams is a reporter for the State House News Service. Reach her at [email protected].
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